Holly Phillips


Holly Phillips is a Canadian writer of science fiction and fantasy.

Life and career

Phillips was born in Nelson, British Columbia. She was raised in Trail and other small towns in British Columbia. She attended Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, but contracted fibromyalgia and did not complete her degree. Resettling in Trail in 1994, she took creative writing classes at a community arts collective. Her early short stories mostly appeared in small-press magazines. Her first was published in 2000 in On Spec magazine, for which she was a member of the editorial board for four years beginning in 2001. Her work, often straddling a borderline between science fiction and fantasy, tends to focus on protagonists in ambiguous situations that can be explained or understood in different, often mutually incompatible ways. In addition to writing she is a member of the Celtic folk music trio Pickled Thistle.

Awards and honours

Phillips's stories "In the Palace of Repose" and "The Other Grace" were finalists for the 2004 International Horror Guild Award and the 2006 World Fantasy award, respectively. Her collection In the Palace of Repose won the 2006 Sunburst Award and was a finalist for the 2006 World Fantasy and Crawford awards.

Novels